John Bolton: Inexplicable to Say Iran in Compliance with Nuclear Agreement

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton warned Breitbart News Daily on Friday that North Korea’s nuclear missile technology will soon find its way into Iranian hands. He proceeded to criticize Trump administration officials, like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, for protecting the Iran nuclear deal despite Iran’s clear violations of the agreement.

In Bolton’s estimation, “to be successful, the Trump administration has got to get control over the entire federal bureaucracy, particularly in the national security arena.”

“Too often, I think we’ve seen the bureaucracy still on autopilot from January the 19 of this year,” he said. “The decision a couple of weeks ago for the second time to certify that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal is just inexplicable.”

“That was, according to the press – the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are never wrong – supported by all of the president’s top national security advisers,” he said, inserting a sliver of dry chuckle to indicate he does not actually believe the New York Times and Washington Post are infallible.

“Now, the president said yesterday he doesn’t think they’re in compliance. So he needs to grasp the bureaucracy by its coat lapels and say, ‘Listen to what I’m telling you. We need to get out of this deal.’ If he doesn’t do that, not only will the policy not change, eventually, it will come back to bite him,” Bolton warned.

Marlow suggested the State Department was also out of touch with the White House foreign policy agenda.

“You’re exactly right,” Bolton replied. “Every bureaucracy in Washington has its own culture. Some of them, like the State Department, have several sub-cultures. The overwhelming political perspective of the career employees of the State Department is liberal Democrat. It affects their policy in virtually every aspect.”

“What you need at the State Department is not a reorganization. You need a cultural revolution,” he contended. “I wrote about this in my memoir, Surrender Is Not an Option. I’m not plugging the book, because it’s ten years old, but I go into it at some length there. What you need to do is to find the career people who understand what the function of a career official is, and that’s to implement the president’s policy.”

“That’s not happening now, and every day that goes by that it’s not happening is a further problem for the Trump administration,” Bolton said.